


mass destruction

by green_piggy



Series: bond writes for xbc femslash week 2021 [3]
Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, During Canon, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Fluff, mythra and herald waving at each other: SAME FEAR!!! SAME FEAR!!!, suicidal character, zeke features but not enough to be tagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29319894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_piggy/pseuds/green_piggy
Summary: Herald runs off after a vicious battle. Mythra, who understands only all-too-well her deepest fears, goes to find her, determined to not let her suffer alone.
Relationships: Hikari | Mythra/Teni | Herald
Series: bond writes for xbc femslash week 2021 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149800
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15
Collections: Xenoblade Femslash Week 2021





	mass destruction

**Author's Note:**

> written for day 3's prompt "post-battle!" - this one was also inspired by an idea from twitter who suggested mythra and herald and their fear of their power - thank you so much for the galaxy brained idea!! :3
> 
> this one isn't as proofread as i'd like, but it's been a hell of a long day lmao - i'll reply to comments when i can, thank you for all the support so far!! ;A;

"Oh, Mythra!"

Humming, Mythra turned in the direction of the raucous voice — and, sure enough, there was Zeke jogging towards her. A scowl settled in before she could stop it, even though she didn’t  _ really  _ mind him, and it was so comfortable in the familiar etches of her face that she couldn’t smooth it out. She rested a fist on her hip.

“What’s up, Thunderdweeb?”

_ “Thunderdweeb!?”  _ Zeke cried, throwing out his arm. “Why, I — ack, that isn’t important!” Just like that, the outrage on his face melted into concern. It was a pretty strange expression to see on him. “You haven’t seen Herald anywhere, have you?”

Mythra raised her eyebrows. “I haven’t, no. And you're askin' me why..?”

“I think she’s upset ‘cause I fainted in the last battle,” Zeke said, resting a hand on his chin, his elbow on top of his crossed arm. “And… well. You know what she’s like. She buggered off before I had the chance to say anything.”

“She took _that_ personally?” Mythra blinked. “You faint nearly every battle. It’s part of your ‘charm.’”

“That’s jolly kind of you!”

Way to  _ totally  _ miss the point, she thought with no small amount of fondness.

“But, yeah,” Zeke continued. “You have those gigantic machine things, right?”

“…Are you talking about  _ Siren?” _

“Yeah, that!” Zeke thrust his arm up to the sky. “And Herald’s, like, a huge dragon woman! Can’t you use those things to see where she is?”

“Siren isn’t—” Mythra scoffed. “Siren isn’t an extra pair of eyes, you dumbass. I tell it where to shoot, and it shoots. It’s a weapon.”

There was a beat of silence, before Zeke let out a long  _ “ooooooooh”. _ And, then, before he could get any more ‘bright’ ideas:

“I’ll go look for her, though. I’m an  _ expert  _ at hide-and-seek.”

Zeke grinned. “Thanks, Mythra! You’re the best!”

Mythra crossed her arms, swaying her body side-to-side. “Pfft.  _ Duh.  _ You better save me some dessert, though!”

“Will do, chum!”

Waving over her shoulder, Mythra shook the snow off her shoe before taking a step forward… and promptly had them caked in snow again.

The lower level of Tantal was a blanket of white as far as the eye could see, with ruins jutting out from rocks and pillars. It was strange to imagine that people had once lived here.

Everyone else had begun to make their way back to Theosoir, trudging up the Lumos Pillar. Mythra went over to the edge of the railing; she hadn’t been paying much attention around her after the last battle, but she swore she’d seen a flash of black come this way…

Yup — sure enough, amongst the skinny trees and the roaming Mant Arieses, there was a familiar dragonic shape in the snow.

Mythra stretched her arms over her head, squatted down to limber up her legs, and leapt over the stone railing. The tip of her shoe caught on the stone; her hand slipped, and she went shooting through the air with a yelp.

It turned out that when you fell from a pretty high height onto five-hundred-year-old snow, it was like slamming concrete. Mythra smacked it cheek first. If she wasn’t a Blade, she’d definitely be nursing a broken jaw. Instead, she pushed herself onto her stomach with a groan and rubbed at her aching face.

Far above her, Rex let out a yelp, hissing as he clutched at his suddenly stinging face.

Thankfully, she was wearing her leggings and fully covered dress for the cold weather, so she didn’t have to worry about her bare legs freezing to death or clumps of snow down her front. Architect, though, her arms were  _ cold. _

Rubbing them, Mythra shivered and turned on her foot towards where she’d spotted Herald. She was sitting near the high rocks overlooking the Argan Iceblooms, and didn’t seem to notice Mythra approaching. She only glanced up when Mythra’s shadow fell over her. It was strange seeing her being so… well,  _ small,  _ when she usually towered over the rest of them in that strange mechanoid-like device.

Mythra flopped down next to her, folding her legs to the side. Herald was watching her with wary eyes, as though expecting to be told off, but Mythra had been in her position plenty of times before. The amount of times she’d gone sulking off, over one thing or another, and Addam would scold her as soon as he eventually found her. He’d always gone looking for her.

She swallowed and ducked her head for a few seconds. She hadn’t  _ wanted  _ someone telling her off for behaving like the kid that she really was, Aegis or not. All she had wanted was someone who would sit with her for a while and make her feel a bit less lonely.

Her fingers started to idly trace a pattern in the snow. Humming to herself, Mythra spread out her fingers and dug them deep into the ground, bundling it together to form a tiny snowball. She kept rolling it about under the palm of her hand until it grew bigger and bigger. When it got to about the size of her hand, she picked it up, brought her arm back, and hurled it as far as she could with a mighty cry.

It splattered against the ground a few metres from a large Novl Ories, which stopped moving and gave her a curious look. Mythra stuck her tongue out and immediately regretted it from the chill that assaulted her mouth.

Snapping it shut, she watched the beast snort and turn away.

“You ever made a snowball before?” Mythra asked.

Herald startled. “Have I… what?”

“Betcha can’t throw it further than I did.”

She almost certainly could, on account of being part of a large dragonic mechanoid, but that part wasn’t important. What  _ was  _ important was that Mythra needed some kind of ice-breaker (heh, get it, because they were in — she was shutting up now); starting a conversation with  _ “hey I totally get all of your fears about possessing a power you never asked for or wanted and hurting your loved ones with it, only I’m way worse!”  _ really wasn’t the best of ideas.

She waited for Herald to reply. She wasn’t the fastest of talkers at the best of times. Eventually, just as Mythra had began to count the snowflakes drifting in the sky:

“Doesn’t it feel… childish?”

“Eh, a bit.” Mythra leaned back on her hands and tilted her head upwards. No wonder that Genbu was such a  _ cold  _ Titan all of the time, shitty circulation aside; the huge number of gaping holes across its top meant that it couldn’t trap any heat whatsoever. “But so what? Having fun is childish?”

Herald frowned — well, deeper than her usual expression. She held out a hand and twisted her fingers. Her other giant arm mirrored the action. “It would be difficult for me to make one.”

“What, just ‘cause you’ve got big hands?” Mythra snorted. “You chickenin’ out that easily?”

“It’s not that.” Herald grasped her hand — her  _ actual  _ hand — over her Core Crystal. “What if I… hurt someone?”

Mythra scoffed. “It’s a  _ snowball.  _ It falls apart as soon as it hits something. Trust me, it barely hurts.” Not that she would really know. It wasn’t as if she’d even been whacked by one before. Even in winter, Torna had been a pleasantly warm Titan, and none of the various ones that they’d travelled to had been especially cold. For a second, she thought about Milton; imagined his face if she flung a snowball at him, before she stomped on that hard. “And there’s no one down here anyway. Just a few animals.”

“If you’re… sure.”

“I am!” Grunting, Mythra reached over and began to form another snowball with her hands. “Here, I’ll get you started.”

Herald didn’t speak, but Mythra could feel her gaze on her as she kneeled the snow into something resembling a sphere. She got on her knees and leaned over. “Here ya go!”

“Ah…” Slowly, hesitantly, Herald outstretched her hands, cupping them together. Mythra placed the snowball in them. If she lingered for a second or two, silently admiring how  _ warm  _ Herald was, nobody else needed to know. “Thank you.” Herald clutched it against her chest; were it not for the slight, gentle smile on her face, Mythra would have squawked at the crumbling snowball. “No one has ever… given me something directly before. Into these hands.”

Well. Mythra was going to have some words with a certain bonehead tonight. For now, though, she gave an awkward smile and glanced away. “Ahaha  _ you don’t need to make a big deal out of it.” _

Who said  _ “ahaha”  _ out loud?  _ Great  _ going, Mythra, she glumly thought to herself.

She heard Pyra giggling in the back of her head.

_ Go back to sleep! _

_ Okay, okay,  _ Pyra replied, still quietly laughing.

“I mean it!”

Herald tipped her head to the side, looking confused. “Mean what?”

_ “Hahaha nothing.” _

_ Damn you, Pyra! _

No reply. Oh, she was—

“T-throw the thing already!” Mythra stuttered. Still thoroughly mortified, she gripped Herald’s wrist. “Just — pull your arm back—”

Herald’s elbow thudded against her frame. “I can’t really do that.”

A beat of silence.

“W-w-well then!” Mythra yanked the snowball from Herald’s grasp and shoved it into the cold dragonic fingers of her mech. “Throw it with that!”

“Affirmative.”

Herald cocked the arm back at a perfect angle, then grunted and  _ flung. _

The ball shot into the sky. Mythra watched it go — and go it did. It made her own throw look as though a newborn child had attempted to move a boulder. It continued to gain height, higher and higher, until it soared past the pillar the Airborne Throne was sat on, disappearing out of sight.

Mythra blinked. Herald still had her arm high.

“…I think you might have won that one,” Mythra said lamely.

“I did?”

_ “Definitely.” _

Mythra knew that she was a sore loser, even when stacked against impossible odds, but the hint of Herald’s sincere smile definitely lessened the sting.

She almost hated to be the one to remove it, but…

“So why you out here, anyway?” Mythra brought up a leg close to her and rested her arm on her knee. “Running away from your Driver isn’t a very smart move, y’know.”

Herald flinched. She wrapped her arms around her legs, her gigantic ones unmoving.

_ Huh.  _ So they could move independently.

“My strength, it is…” Herald sighed. “I don’t want to harm my friends.”

Mythra rolled her eyes. Herald was worried about  _ her  _ strength? Really?

“Boo-hoo, you once accidentally demolished a crappy old temple.” Mythra pulled her knees up against her chest. “I destroyed at least three Titans. Trust me, I  _ get  _ it. I get being terrified of your own power.”

There was a shuffle beside her. When she glanced up from her folded arms, Herald was staring at her with wide brown eyes. “…You too?”

Mythra snorted. “Yeah. Me too.”

Silence. The wind howled around them, whistling through the trees and over the tops of the boulders around them. There was a mechanical whirling noise; Herald was holding her hand out, eyes clouded.

“My last Driver… killed themselves to stop me,” Herald whispered. “When I saw Zeke collapse today, I…” She closed her eyes and clenched her hand into a fist. “I don’t remember it. I have no way of doing so. But… it felt familiar. I was terrified.”

“He faints constantly.” Mythra murmured. “It’s really not something you need to stress about. He doesn’t mind. None of us do.” She looked up at Herald and tried to give her best smile, well aware of how she probably just looked constipated. “We’re all here to help you, remember? Through the good  _ and  _ the bad. History won't repeat itself. We’re not afraid of you.”

Her heart ached when she said that last line.

Well, if she’d been this emotionally open so far, might as well go all the way, right? Even if she wasn’t nearly as strong as an  _ Aegis,  _ Herald was still a heck of a lot more powerful than most Blades. If anyone could understand, it’d be her.

“My first Driver…” Mythra said, staring up at the top of Genbu through the thick snowflakes. “He was a good person — honestly, the sweetest and most caring guy you’d ever meet. But he was a terrible Driver.”

_ “Terrible?” _

“He was terrified of me.” Mythra scoffed. “And he never wanted any kind of power. Not even to protect his country, or his people. He just wanted to set up a little farm in the middle of nowhere with his family. Me coming into the picture…” She dug her nails into her leggings. “It ruined all of that.”

Herald’s eyes were wide.

“It’s the same as you — I didn’t  _ ask  _ to be the Aegis. I didn’t  _ ask  _ to have enough power to down a Titan with a single thought. I didn’t  _ ask  _ to have to live in constant fear that one little slip-up would kill everyone I loved. I just wanted to find my place in the world. But…”

She caught herself just in time and stayed quiet.

_ But I’d rather not be in this world at all. _

“A-anyway.” Mythra crossed her arms over her chest tightly. “I don’t blame him for acting the way he did, but he treated me like a child, not as an equal. He was struggling with — with a lot, I could tell. Everyone around him could tell. And we all tried to help, but he always just laughed it off and said not to worry. If he’d just been more open — with them, with _me,_ maybe Torna would still be here today. I dunno.”

There was a large, mechanical shifting noise, the grinding of gears, before something large and cold rested over Mythra’s hand. She jumped and almost pulled it back in surprise — but it was Herald’s, her face bright red.

“I…” she began haltingly. “I have heard that this… comforts people.”

Mythra laughed — or tried to, at least, but the noise caught on a lump in her throat. She ducked her head and blinked furiously to try to hide her watering eyes. “You don’t usually do it quite like that, but, yeah.”

“Then how do you do it?”

“With your actual hand — here, hold on…”

Mythra clambered to her knees and shuffled over so that she was sitting in the crook of Herald’s giant arm. She reached out her arm, hand outstretched. A few seconds later, that warmth tangled around her fingers. Herald’s large arm curled in around Mythra, so that she was enveloped entirely in its embrace.

It was… pleasant. Way nicer than it had any right to be. Mythra breathed in the chilled air through her nostrils, and felt that tightness in her throat begin to unravel — right before guilt slammed into her. She’d gone out to comfort Herald, not to ramble on about her own problems.

“I didn’t mean to dump all of that on you,” Mythra whispered. “I just… I just want you to know that you’re not alone, Herald. We’re not afraid of you.”

“Could I not say the same?”

_ “Huh?” _

Herald tilted her head down towards Mythra with a smile. “You are not alone either, Mythra. And I do not fear you, and nor do any of our friends — no. Our  _ family.” _

Mythra smiled. This time, she didn’t try to prevent the tears that soon ran down her cheeks. “…Thank you.”

They stayed like that until Nia’s voice bellowed through the land, threatening to skewer them and shove an ether cannon up their bloody arses if they didn’t show themselves.

That small moment didn’t suddenly make everything better. It didn’t alleviate that weight from Mythra’s chest entirely, that heaviness, the aching exhaustion of  _ living.  _ It didn’t silence the self-loathing thoughts that made it so difficult to put one foot in front of the other, to look at her family and not go  _ “they’re better off without you.” _

But, it did make some things better. It did make that weight a little bit easier to carry. It did quieten her mind for a short while.

And that, well. That was the most at peace that Mythra had probably ever been.

**Author's Note:**

> [ [twitter](https://twitter.com/greenpiggles) ]
> 
> kudos and comments are swaggity as fuck. thank you for reading, and have a great day! <3


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